Screening Date: 30 October 2025
Screening Time: 7 pm
Release Date: 2024
Director: Alain Guiraudie
Country: France
Running Time: 102 mins
Rating: R 18+
Language: French (with English subtitles)
A sly, midnight-black thriller-comedy, Misericordia shadows wayward thirty-something Jérémie as he returns to his rural hometown for a funeral and tumbles into a tangle of missing persons, queasy desire and small-village spite. Guiraudie—still best known for Stranger by the Lake—blends Hitchcockian menace with bawdy farce, letting every forest path and church confessional vibrate with secrets.
It’s always dicey when a filmmaker tries to yoke erotic kink to murder-mystery mechanics; you can’t help wondering if the body heat will smother the suspense. Will rural ribaldry derail the slow-burn dread? In this case, deliciously not.
Shot on shoestring Super 16 around the Aveyron villages where Guiraudie grew up—crew bunking in spare bedrooms and borrowing tractors for tracking shots—the production mirrors its protagonist’s homecoming. Festival buzz erupted after its Cannes Premiere slot, rolled on to Valladolid where it nabbed the Espiga de Oro, and reached Australia with an R 18+ tag for “high-impact nudity,” turning notoriety into marketing gold.
More than a whodunnit, Misericordia probes faith, class and the erotic charge of returning to places that once defined you. By the final reel—equal parts confession and punchline—the real sin isn’t lust or violence but the mercy we deny ourselves.
“Snappy and satisfying… a thriller that thrills.” – The New Yorker
